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Centerplate names new executive chef for North America

Carmen Callo tasked with reinforcing culinary culture in newly created position

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

October 2, 2017

1 Min Read
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Centerplate has promoted Carmen Callo to the newly created position of vice president and corporate executive chef for North America, the Stamford, Conn.-based company said Friday. 

Communications director Paul Pettas called the appointment “another step in our trying to establish [consistent] customer experience standards across all of our venues,” including entertainment venues, sports stadiums and convention centers. 

Carmen Callo

Photo: Centerplate

A graduate of Johnson & Wales University, Callo has been with Centerplate since 2002, when he was executive sous chef at the expanded Colorado Convention Center in Denver. He opened Blue Bear Farm in 2012 to provide local, seasonal produce for the convention center.

“Carmen is a proven professional who has played a critical role at the Colorado Convention Center for us over the last 14-plus years,” Centerplate president and CEO Chris Verros said in a release. “He is an asset to our organization and someone who will help strengthen the overall offering that we provide our guests on a daily basis.”

Callo will oversee menus at all of its North American locations, including sourcing local ingredients, creating menu items and engaging with the chefs at each venue. 

He said he would focus on empowering local chefs to use their creativity and to purchase “relevant products locally,” as well as inspiring collaboration among the foodservice provider’s hundreds of chefs, “to capitalize on the power of the group.” 

He added that he would work to further define the company’s “culinary culture and philosophy” around creating memorable and locally relevant experiences.

“If you can connect it to the memory of the event, I think that’s where the win is,” he said.

Callo will remain based in Denver.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected]

Follow him on Twitter: @foodwriterdiary

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About the Author

Bret Thorn

Senior Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News

Senior Food & Beverage Editor

Bret Thorn is senior food & beverage editor for Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality for Informa’s Restaurants and Food Group, with responsibility for spotting and reporting on food and beverage trends across the country for both publications as well as guiding overall F&B coverage. 

He is the host of a podcast, In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn, which features interviews with chefs, food & beverage authorities and other experts in foodservice operations.

From 2005 to 2008 he also wrote the Kitchen Dish column for The New York Sun, covering restaurant openings and chefs’ career moves in New York City.

He joined Nation’s Restaurant News in 1999 after spending about five years in Thailand, where he wrote articles about business, banking and finance as well as restaurant reviews and food columns for Manager magazine and Asia Times newspaper. He joined Restaurant Hospitality’s staff in 2016 while retaining his position at NRN. 

A magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in history, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Thorn also studied traditional French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He spent his junior year of college in China, studying Chinese language, history and culture for a semester each at Nanjing University and Beijing University. While in Beijing, he also worked for ABC News during the protests and ultimate crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thorn’s monthly column in Nation’s Restaurant News won the 2006 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for best staff-written editorial or opinion column.

He served as president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, in 2005.

Thorn wrote the entry on comfort food in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd edition, published in 2012. He also wrote a history of plated desserts for the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, published in 2015.

He was inducted into the Disciples d’Escoffier in 2014.

A Colorado native originally from Denver, Thorn lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Bret Thorn’s areas of expertise include food and beverage trends in restaurants, French cuisine, the cuisines of Asia in general and Thailand in particular, restaurant operations and service trends. 

Bret Thorn’s Experience: 

Nation’s Restaurant News, food & beverage editor, 1999-Present
New York Sun, columnist, 2005-2008 
Asia Times, sub editor, 1995-1997
Manager magazine, senior editor and restaurant critic, 1992-1997
ABC News, runner, May-July, 1989

Education:
Tufts University, BA in history, 1990
Peking University, studied Chinese language, spring, 1989
Nanjing University, studied Chinese language and culture, fall, 1988 
Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, Cértificat Elémentaire, 1986

Email: [email protected]

Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-thorn-468b663/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bret.thorn.52
Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
Instagram: @foodwriterdiary

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